Salesforce announced Salesforce Einstein, its artificial intelligence (AI) initiative. This year, artificial intelligence and its close cousins, machine learning, predictive analytics, natural language processing and smart data discovery are the focus areas for the company. Salesforce Einstein isn’t so much a product but is a technology umbrella under which all of Salesforce’s artificial intelligence pieces live.

Salesforce wants to use every aspect of its platform to take the complexity out of AI, giving Salesforce CRM an intelligence boom, while exposing the AI APIs to let customers build intelligent apps on the Salesforce platform. The aim of the company is to focus on making a smarter CRM tool, one that surfaces the information that matters by putting key data in front for the benefit of salesmen.

Salesforce didn’t necessarily invent these AI approaches, but is building a version of many AI and machine learning tools. The company pulled together 175 data scientists to help create Salesforce Einstein, while leveraging acquisitions such as MetaMind, PredictionIO and RelateIQ. Read more.

Salesforce has access to a large body of information about customers, territories, and so forth, and it can provide aggregated data from customers who choose to share that information (without exposing any competitive details). It made clear it won’t share information if a company opts out.

Pricing and availability will vary, and may involve an additional charge, or could be included with the cost of the license, depending on the service. Einstein AI tools are built in across the platform such as Community Cloud with automated community case escalation and recommended experts, files and groups; Analytics Cloud with smart data discovery and Commerce Cloud with product recommendations.